Big Buck Hunter is a game hunting video game developed by Play Mechanix. Primarily developed for arcades, the goal of the game is to shoot moving bucks without shooting a doe or female animal.
The initial series of games released from 2000 to 2005 by Incredible Technologies operated on a single gun platform and allowed four players to compete round robin style through various treks and bonus stages. Games beginning with Big Buck Hunter Pro, released in 2006 by Raw Thrills, introduced a two-gun platform, allowing head-to-head competition in addition to a variety of new animals and critters to hunt.
What are we tropin'?
- Adaptational Wimp: The zombie deer, in their own adventure mode they run like normal deer upon getting shot at, whist in "In Case of Zombies" they would actively try and ram you.
- Anti-Frustration Features: Thankfully and also amusingly enough, the does in the Zombie Deer adventure are not zombified, making it REAL easy to tell the difference between the undead bucks and them.
- For obvious reasons, you are allowed to shoot female zombies in "In Case of Zombies".
- Bears Are Bad News: Bears can appear as a Dangerous Trophy in the normal adventures, there's also ZOMBIE bears, where one is the Final Boss in "In case of Zombies", and the Nightbear seen in "In Case of Monsters" counts too.
- Butt-Monkey: Pappy. He always gets into trouble somehow mainly in the Bonus Rounds, What takes the cake is the "In Case of Zombies" campaign where he's directly (Although it's with stupidity over actual malice) responsible for the zombies because he thought it was a good idea to make moonshine out of toxic waste.
- Boom, Headshot!: Taking an animal down with a headshot even gets you bonus points! Also, this is the only way to kill the zombie deer in their hunting mode.
- Dude in Distress: Pappy in both "In case of Zombies" and "In Case of Monsters", Even though in the latter he's not in as much hot water as the former, in the latter's case the Colossal Foot seems to be more in love with him than anything.
- Friendly Zombie: The Tour Guide in the Zombie Deer adventure, tastefully.
- Game-Over Man: As of Wild, If you only shoot a doe during a site, she will appear along with "You shot a doe!" and shake her head in disappointment as a failure stinger plays, it's even different per animal!
- Harder Than Hard: Does the normal Whitetail Deer mode seem tricky? The ZOMBIE deer adventure makes that look easy, where only a headshot can take a buck down, and even it's tastefully reskinned bonus rounds are tougher! The logo for that adventure even has a red "Hard mode" sticker on it long with the tagline "Headshots only!"
- Island of Mystery: The lost island the Buckzilla adventure and "In Case of Monsters" take place in can be called this, it has lush forests with huge mushrooms, weird looking animals, and a huge Bigfoot like gorilla! And raptors, for some reason.
- No Antagonist: Unless you count the dangerous trophy animals, but they only show up now and than and the game lets you know ahead of time if one's on a site. Also, in the "In Case of Zombies" there's of course the zombies and the Colossal Foot in "In Case of Monsters"
- No Plot? No Problem!: Only a few select adventures have a plot of any kind, but most of the time you're just huntin' deer and the likes.
- Raising the Steaks: In Reloaded, there's zombie deer, chickens, raccoons and bears in the "In Case of Zombies" adventure, the first of these even has their own adventure mode where they can only be killed with a headshot, which is considered the game's Hard Mode.
- Shout-Out
- The Duck Hunt bonus, yes it comes with a dog, thankfully this one's a NORMAL dog.
- Buckzilla's Super Pappio Bonus, do we need to explain?
- The fact Colossal Foot snatches Pappy sounds like the plot of a certain game... But with a GUY getting kidnapped instead.
- Sickly Green Glow: "In Case of Zombies" has moonshine jugs that glow green (Because they have toxic waste in them), and the zombies have their innards green too, but they don't glow.
- Time Travel: How you basically can hunt Irish Elk in the first place, although it's never explained how exactly you do just that and not cause a Butterfly Effect.
- Wouldn't Hit a Girl: More like "Wouldn't Shoot a Doe or Female Animal", shooting a female would end your hunt at a site prematurely, also bizarrely enough there seems to be no zombie does.
